An Environment for Designing and Sharing Adaptation Rules for Accessible Applications

Raúl Miñón, Fabio Paternò, Myriam Arrue

Problem Statement

Motivation

• Model-Based UI design is a promising approach to deal with this problems since…– It allows generating different FUIs adequate for

the specific needs of each user.– The independence of the programming language

and the platform abstracts their specific different issues.

– The required standards and accessibility guidelines can be included in the generation process.

Main Goal & Contributions

• To reduce the gap between: – knowledge & workload of the developers – the accessible applications issues

• To provide the community a design space composed of key concepts related to adaptations for people with special needs.

• To create a repository for collecting different adaptation rules for people with special needs.

• To provide access to the repository to allow MBUI systems the integration of the adaptation rules.

Design Space

Target Users

• Different capabilities require different adaptations necessity of a model of disabilities– Sight: low vision, blindness, colour blindness, photosensitivity

and eyestrain.– Hearing: deafness and mild-deafness.– Physical: limited-movement, key-board only users, Parkinson

and paraplegia. – Cognitive: decline in maintaining attention, learning disabilities,

language disabilities and reduced memory capacity.• The adaptation rules can be related to a general category

or to a specific disability.

Granularity Level

• Adaptations can have an impact at different granularity levels of the UI:– Application, Presentation, Group of Elements and

Single Element.– External adaptations that go further the current

application.• Useful to identify the most suitable order of

execution for the adaptation rules.

Adapted UI & Adaptive UI

• Adapted UI adapted at design time and are instantiated at run-time. – Focused on tailoring the most adequate UI for the

specific capabilities of the user. – When users with disabilities interact with the UI, it is

totally adapted to their needs.– Valid when the context of the user is static

• When the context is dynamic, sometimes the UI needs to be adaptive to change according to it.

Abstraction Level

• According Cameleon Framework: – Task and Domain, Abstract UI, Concrete UI and

Final UI.• If there is a specific requirement derived from

an adaptation rule, the designer can perform the necessary changes in the first phases of the design process.– less effort in making modifications.

Design of the Adaptation Repository

• The repository stores the adaptation rules modelled with some meta-information to select and classify them adequately:– Rule ID, Source, Adapted UI or Adaptive UI, Disability,

Granularity Level, Assistive Technology and Abstraction Level.

• The Adaptation Rules follow an Event-Condition-Action approach based on the Advanced Adaptation Logic Description Language (Serenoa Project).

An Example of Adaptation Rule

• Rule 1 (deaf target group):– Event: the noise of the environment changes to a

value higher than 25 decibels.– Condition: the user has a mild-deafness disability.– Action: every video has to be changed to a video

with subtitles.

Other Example of Adaptation Rule

• Rule 2 (blind target group):– Event: the user accesses an application with many

interaction elements.– Condition: the user is blind– Action: a table of content is created to easily

access each interaction element.

Other Example of Adaptation Rule

• Rule 6 (paraplegia target group):– Event: the user begins to move.– Condition: the user has paraplegia AND the UI is

not rendered with the vocal modality.– Action: the user interface is changed to the vocal

modality.

Architecture

Conclusion

• The concepts proposed in the design space must be considered when designing an adaptation rule for a person with special needs.

• The adaptation repository eases the task of designing accessible applications.

• MBUI systems can abstract accessibility issues interacting with the repository.

Future Work

• Adaptation rules to support combination of different disabilities.

• Further mechanisms in order to solve possible conflicts among the rules.

Thank You!!!

Any question?